


Garrus and the Elusive Heart

by MalcolmInSpace



Category: Hannibal (TV), Mass Effect
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Pre-Mass Effect 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3928528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalcolmInSpace/pseuds/MalcolmInSpace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus is hunting a new and disturbing serial killer on the Citadel and consults a human psychiatrist for advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Garrus and the Elusive Heart

Garrus Vakarian wasn't intimately familiar with human internal anatomy, but he was reasonably confident they needed that one yellowish organ to live. Which made the jar of them he was staring at all the more disturbing. And on the shelf around it were more jars, jars of bits from turians, krogan, salarians, and more that Garrus couldn't, wouldn't identify. He'd fixated on this one jar, though. Partly because it kept him from grappling with just how many deaths the contents of this room stood for, and partly because he couldn't get over how much the human pancreas looked like the spicy stripmeat snacks his grandmother used to make. 

"Looks like you found your harvester, Vakarian," called one C-Sec officer from the hallway. Despite his mocking tone, Garrus noticed, he didn't actually enter the room or look too long at its contents. Beyond the other officer, Garrus could see a crowd of onlookers beyond the omnitape. Mostly salarians in this neighbourhood, a few humans and assorted others mixed in. Blue armour and flashing lights attracts everyone, Garrus thought, especially when we're swarming over some unoccupied housing block. 

"He's got a point," Pallin said as he entered, ignoring the shouted questions from the press pressing up against the line. "You've seen a rise in organ sales, I see a room full of stolen organs." 

Garrus kept from twitching his mandibles too visibly. "These aren't being sold. There's no refrigeration, no care to it. This isn't the work of a surgeon, like the stuff we've heard about. This is the work of some kind of... collector." 

Pallin's mandibles flexed irritably. "You're probably right. More than that, I'd guess a lot of these are old, years or even decades." 

"Makes sense. A serial with a low kill rate could blend in with the background noise here.". Much as C-Sec was loathe to admit it, crime and murder and all the consequences of sentient beings living cheek by mandible were a reality on The Citadel. 

"I want you to handle this, Vakarian. No, I don't want to hear it. You've already been doing the footwork on organ theft, so anyone else would just be duplicating effort. And you've been quite insistent that the rise on organ sales isn't tied to a rising death toll, so I doubt lives are at greats risk." The Executor raised one hand the indicate the room and its tragic contents. "But this? This is mass murder. And I want it stopped. Oh," he added as he left. "We have a new consultant for strange cases like this. I'll send you his address. But be warned, I'm told he's a bit eccentric. Even for a human." 

******************* 

The address was not what Garrus was expecting. Elegant enough, but overlooking a busy thoroughfare in Zakera Ward, far from the posh districts closer to the Presidium and its prestige. There was a brass sign next to the door, emblazoned with a human name that struck Garrus as anomalous to those he'd heard before. He pushed open the door and walked up the narrow stairs to the second floor. 

The door opened before the second knock, and Garrus found himself facing a tall, trim human in a neat suit. The human had an angular, high-cheekboned face that could be quite easily be caricatured into something like a salarians. He had the calm, unblinking stare of one, Garrus thought, feeling the same sense of disinterested appraisal. 

"Hello," the human consultant said, stepping aside with a courteous gesture of welcome. "You must be Garrus Vakarian. The Executor told me you were coming. Please, sit down." 

Garrus scanned the room as he entered. The human obviously worked out of his home, the front room was furnished as an office. The art was varied and even eclectic. Anatomy diagrams mixed with painting from several worlds, including a gilt-framed Tuchanka Sunrise by Armini, the great neo-asari impressionist, and small statuary of a presumably Terran animal he didn't recognize. Probably something fierce, given the spiny frill. 

"So Palling tells me you're looking for something of a collector," the human said, settling himself in a chair, gesturing again to its twin. His every movement was smooth, practiced, deliberate. Garrus sat, and felt the chair shift beneath him, aligning itself with his turian physiology. The human smiled, briefly. "It is never comfortable when we feel the support beneath us begin to change. Even if it is becoming something better for us." 

"Uh, I suppose not." 

"So. Your collector." 

Garrus sighed. "Yes. We found a disused, supposedly disused, apartment containing hundreds of preserved organs of all species. We have no idea how old the oldest are, not yet, but for that many deaths to go unnoticed by C-Sec, or the press for that matter, they must have been spread over decades." 

"And you think this is somehow connected to the rise in organ sales you've been investigating." 

"You're very well informed." 

"Executor Pallin is a friend." 

Garrus had trouble picturing that. "No, I don't think they're connected, and I'm concerned there will be a move to find one." 

"Surely you don't think so poorly of your fellow officers." 

Garrus simply shrugged. 

"As it happens, I agree with you." The human punched a code on his omnitool and suddenly they were inside a sphere of crime scene photos, a mosaic of once-vital meat. Garrus saw his jar of pancreases, a portrait almost, or the centre of a grisly flower ringed by petals of its contents arranged and catalogued. A flower. Or an entry wound. "This is not the work of a being in the business of saving lives like your black marketeer. This is indeed a collector, a mind that views other beings as things, some of which they wish to preserve and behold. Did you notice how all the specimen jars are ranged to great you as you enter? Your killer thinks these lives are worth preserving, worth basking in the presence of. Perhaps he loves them, in his way." 

"Wait, back up. You think the organ smuggler is doing it to save lives?" 

"Perhaps that is not his primary goal, but it must be a consideration. If it was not, his products would be without value to him. And benevolent or not, lives are saved by him." 

"And what about the lives he ends?" 

The human shrugged. "For there to be rebirth there must first be death. Is that why you are so haunted by your organ dealer? Because you see the fruits of suffering but cannot locate the source? You feel an imbalance, and until you correct it the world will continue sliding down that slope." 

Garrus shrugged. "I suppose. I worry that procedure is just getting in my way. This... butcher isn't following the rules, but I am still bound to them." 

"Sometimes when the things we thought were there to guide us become instead obstacles we must step over them before we can grow." 

"And yet that goes against everything my training, my culture, even my own father, has taught me." 

"And how does that make you feel," asked Doctor Hannibal Lecter.


End file.
